travel * Longsheng Rice Terraces, Guangxi, China

On the final day before catching our flight back home to Shanghai, we went to hike in the famous Longsheng rice terraces north of Guilin.

We checked out of our hostel in the early morning and then hired a private driver to take us up north including our luggage and then drop us off at the airport at the end of the day. This is a very feasible option for any small group and saves you the back and forth as Longji is located about 4.5 hours away from Yangshuo. According to most travel books it should be only around 3 hours way, however, the roads are all rather torn up and the mountains make for slow driving, so plan in plenty of time.

Once again it paid off to travel off season – we were the only tourists there. We were in fact so unexpected, that it even was impossible to buy any lunch and nobody tried to sell us any hair-show, souvenir or similar nonsense.

You can hike for hours through bamboo forests and rice terraces. It can get quite “off the beaten track” and we came across wild horses and goats.